One of the financiers of the truck interviewed said "These are business owners and individuals that really just want the atheists to know that God hasn't given up on them."

Umm....thanks? The nearest church to me with JESUSISTHEREASONFOR THESEASON in 5 foot tall letters out next to the road must be all of five blocks away. Who knows what would happen if I happened to see a bus drive by reminding me that godless people aren't evil if it weren't immediately followed by a message reiterating that people with God* aren't either? For one second life amidst the normal deluge of pro-Christian messages that is living in DFW might be interrupted by someone saying "Hey, we're okay too." Best to drown that out immediately. Hire a stalkermobile, stat!

How about a bus to follow the bus that follows the bus that says "1 billion hindus are good with gansesh" or "1.5 billion muslims are good with allah" or "ancient greeks were good with zeus" or "the norse were good with odin".

Hee. If everybody joined in, we could get a good long caravan going...

* Only 2.1 billion? I guess "good with God" only refers to the Christians.

2 comments:

"Good without God" is a common argument that tends to 'miss the forest for the trees' or else misses one crucial point which renders it as self-defeating.

"The purpose of the argument is not to argue that one must believe in God to be moral, but rather that God must exist in order to anchor moral values. Objective morals are distinguished from absolute morals. "Absolute" means a moral value always holds regardless of the situation, such as that lying is always wrong even in situations where we might think it is right. "Objective" means that moral values hold regardless of what anyone thinks, so for instance the Holocaust was wrong even if everyone were brainwashed into thinking it right.

1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist

2. Objective moral values and duties do exist

3. Therefore, God exists"

Read the details of each point including counter-arguments to common objections here: http://rocketphilosophy.blogspot.co.nz/2011/07/moral-argument.html

As there is exactly zero actual evidence for any actual gods in this universe (so far ... we do keep looking), "good without god" could be accurately condensed to "good". You may assert all you like that some wordplay with "morals" and "objective" and "absolute" equates to evidence for your god, but that's as substantial as children clapping for Tinkerbell.

Of course morality can be described and shared and changed. Other things that can be described and shared and changed include "peace" and "stress" and "worry" and "calm" and so on ad infinitum. No amount of describing the nature of those things or ascribing them to only one species of creature on this planet is going to cause a god to spring into existence.

"Can we be good without god?" is as substantive a question as "Can Pakistani children be happy without Tinkerbell?" Of course they can. Despite having never been impacted in the slightest by a pretty little fairy that doesn't happen to exist, Pakistani children are observed every day to be quite happy.

All arguments for god are ontological arguments, and they only can be ontological arguments. Since those arguing for god have no real evidence for god, they have to make some up in their heads.

Gretchen Koch

A costly signal, in evolutionary terms, is a hard-to-fake sign of expenditure of resources for the purpose of demonstrating mate value-- the classic example is a male peacock's tail. In terms of human behavior it could be any display of exertion or expenditure performed for a variety of reasons, but especially to vividly display commitment to a group or an ideal. A blog, by contrast, is practically the definition of cheap signaling: a place where ideas can be freely and rashly expressed without necessarily indicating commitment to anything in particular, but the messages are conveyed nonetheless.

Gretchen's cheap signals on religion, cognition, science, feminism, sustainability, social justice issues, gaming, pop culture, moral psychology and a whole lot more can be found here. She has a PhD in the cognitive science of religion but should not be considered an expert on anything.